An Evening in Harwood
by Ferum Oxide
Summary: An evening in the life of GTA3's main character. FINAL chapter is up. Kindly review.
1. An Evening in Harwood

**Disclaimer: Yeah, I don't own GTA3 or any part of it……so don't sue me!  **

**Please note: This story is purely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. **

Indeed, it was a busy day for Joe Anonymous. Making a living in Liberty City isn't exactly very easy. It's been getting harder and harder to hijack vehicles these days. Apparently, the populace has discovered an amazing device on car doors called a lock.

Cruising through Harwood in his stolen Stallion, Joe spots a hotdog vendor by the side of the road. Feeling hungry, he stopped his car. He got off and slowly strolled to the vendor. He stood in front of the stand and stared at the steaming hotdogs like an idiot.

"Hey, man! You want a hotdog or something?? Eh? Hey! I'm talking to you! Are you deaf or something?" said the vendor to Joe.

Unfortunately, Joe is so anti-social that he can't talk. Well, what do you expect from a man who spends his days killing people for no apparent reason? So, Joe does the only thing he can do when faced with human interaction; he whips out his baseball bat and swings a homer at the vendor.

The vendor falls as his blood is splattered all over the sidewalk. Joe takes a hotdog and gets back into his car. He takes a slow drive back to his hideout, listening to the car's radio playing softly in the background as he savored his hotdog.


	2. The Package

**_A rather long note: _**_This being my first fanfic, I just couldn't abandon it like some sort of bastard son. So, I give you, the second chapter._

_*Please note that my definition of north south east and west is based on maps from the internet. I'm assuming they are correct._

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Chapter 2

            "Hey, who did this to you?" said the gang member. 

            On Portland, there are three gangs. The Mafia to the east, the Triads in Chinatown, and the Diablos in Harwood. This being Harwood, the gang member was obviously from the Diablo gang.

            "I – I don't know. It happened so fast! One minute I was talking to him and the next – POW – I was out," mumbled the vendor, sitting in a puddle of his own blood.

            "What did this man look like?"

            "I don't know, man! He was wearing a leather jacket. And a p-pair of green cargo pants! He was driving in a red Stallion and … I-I think he went t-that way," the vendor pointed west, towards the sea.

            "Nobody can just come and fuck around on Diablo turf! Come on, let's find this arsehole!" said the red capped gang member. His fellow gang members murmured in agreement. There were 8 of them in all. They piled into a couple of Diablo Stallions and sped off in search of the perpetrator. 

The sun had nearly set, barely visible between two skyscrapers on Staunton. It painted the sky a beautiful shade of vermillion. However, it reminded Joe of blood. It made him sick. How many had he killed? A thousand? Ten thousand?  There was no way of knowing, and quite frankly, Joe didn't want to know.

He absent-mindedly played with the package in his hands. It was thin and long – about four feet in length. It weighed around 10 pounds. On it was a note reading 'Greetings from Vice City – Donald Love'. He opened it.

Outside, the Diablos had spotted the Stallion, parked in the alley front of Joe's hideout. They inspected it, and sure enough, there was a bloodied baseball bat in the back seat. A Diablo member dragged it out of the car, leaving a red streak in the white leather seat. 

"Hey man! Look at this! That bastard must be in there! Let's get him!" said the gangster, holding the bat up high.

The Diablos retrieved their own weapons from one of the souped-up Stallions. Most of their weapons consisted of baseball bats, but one of the gang members had a handgun. They closed in on Joe's hideout. There was no way Joe could escape.

"Hey you mother fucker! Open the door so's we can rearrange yer face! Ya hear me?! We know you're in there!" said one of the gangsters as he banged on the hideout's door.

"Man! He ain't gonna just come out here! We's gotta break the door down!" said another gang member.

As if on cue, the door burst open. The gang member standing in front of the door let out a cry. He fell backwards, his mouth twisted and his eyes wide in terror. He hit the ground with a lifeless thud. 

"Aw, man! He got shot!"

"I dunno, man! I ain't heard no gunshot!" 

"Don't just stand there, man! Get him! Get him!"

The gangsters stopped their mindless chatter and turned their attention toward the silhouette standing at the door of the hideout. The sun had already set and the only light in the alley came from the hideout. 

A brave gang member rushed at the silhouette. He didn't even have time to scream before his head parted company with his body. The Diablos could now clearly see the object which had just taken the lives of two of their members. It was an authentic, finely crafted Japanese katana. It was three and a half feet in length and light was reflecting off its well polished surface. It had a beautiful watermark running along the edge of it.

"A-A sword!! I ain't never seen nothing like that!"

"There are six of us and one of him! Get the bugger!!

Two gangsters rushed at Joe. One of them swung his bat at Joe. His bat made contact with the sword and was promptly cut in half. The Diablo just stared at his bat (half of it anyway) and was stabbed through the chest. The other gang member had not even begun to swing his bat before he was relieved of both his arms.

"Shoot him man!!! Shoot him!!"

            Joe spotted the gangster with the gun. He rushed at him. The gangster managed to get a shot off. It merely grazed Joe's left arm. The katana was swung and it slashed the poor man's abdomen. He screamed in agony as his intestines spilled out. 

            The last two gangsters stared at their dead comrades. Their eyes wide with fear, they turned and started to run. Joe quickly picked up the handgun and emptied the magazine into them. They dropped like a pair of flies.

            Joe looked around the now empty alley. The ground was stained red with blood. He had a long night of cleaning ahead.

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Response to reviews:

funkless : I'm glad that you like how it's written. Well, here's the second chapter. Like I pointed out above, I couldn't just abandon the story. Hope you like it as much as the first.

Thenighthunter: Hmmm, although your review is poorly written, it did raise a point. However, I can reason that Joe, being a hardcore criminal that he is doesn't have to put up with hot dog vendors. In the game, you can't nod to the people on the street anyway. On the story being tragic, think about it this way: Joe will never be anything more than a low-life criminal. He'll go on like that, forced to kill more and more until one day he kneels over and dies. Tragic life, but that's IMHO.


	3. Epilogue

**Author's note: **Took me a long time to finally get down to writing this. This is the last chapter for 'An Evening in Harwood'.

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Epilogue

            Night now had a death grip on Liberty City. Cleaning the blood off his hands, Joe stared blankly at the blood flowing down the drain. He had crammed all the Diablo gang members' bodies into their vehicles, torched them and sent the cars rolling into the sea.

            He sat down heavily in the cheap armchair in front of the TV and sighed. The katana was nicely tucked into a corner of his little hideout; the beautiful wooden scabbard seemed to match the peeling wallpaper very well. Just another instrument of murder in his ever large arsenal.

            Thoughts slowly crept into Joe's mind as he watched a rerun of Liberty City Survivor on the tube. How long had he been killing? How many? When did it all start? When will it end? He only had an answer for the last question: never. 

            As the contestants battled it out with assault rifles on the 21-inch TV, Joe began to reflect on his life. He had never known anything else other than what he was doing now – killing, getting paid, landing in hospitals and killing some more. It occurred to him that that was probably all his life will ever be about.

Another survivor was blown to pieces as Joe's mind continued to wander. He suddenly felt something. It wasn't remorse, for he had never any loved ones, thus would never know how it felt like to lose somebody. It was something else. He realized it was associated with watching the rerun of Survivor. It was boredom.

It dawned on Joe that his life was just plain old boring. There was nothing to break the monotonous cycle except for a fuck or two from a whore from time to time. Even those were passionless and machinelike. The only thing that'll break the cycle would be a bullet between the eyes or a nice, comfortable electric chair.

Joe got up and switched the television off. He dragged himself to his bedroom, kicked off his shoes and got into bed. As he stared at the ceiling, his mind continued its output of thoughts. Why hadn't he realized how boring his life was before? 

The answer didn't take too long to come. It was killing. Killing took his mind off everything. It had helped him to live for all these years and it will continue to do so in the years that will come. A smile broke on Joe's face, the first in a very long time. 

With that smile on his face, Joe switched off the lamp by his bed and went to sleep.        

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The Unreviewer (for chapter 2)

Tobias – Yes, perhaps it did have a little rushed feel to it. But I'm glad you thought it was good.

Funkless – Glad you can see the tragedy in Joe's life. Hope you like this chapter just as much.

Cck – Ah, so sorry. I didn't quite hurry up with this chapter. Here it is anyway. I hope you enjoyed it.

My most heartfelt thanks go out to all who review this fanfic.

Special thanks to EmyLyii for beta-reading.


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